Controversy
The Basement: Meditations on a Human Sacrifice, Millett's semi-fictional book about the 1965 torture and murder of American teenager Sylvia Likens by Gertrude Baniszewski, drew controversy for her defense of the crime. Millett argued for a feminist interpretation of the crime:
is the story of the suppression of women. Gertrude seems to have wanted to administer some terrible truthful justice to this girl: that this was what it was to be a woman.
More generally, humanities scholar Camille Paglia has described Millet's scholarship as deeply flawed, declaring that "American feminism’s nose dive began" when Millet achieved prominence.
Read more about this topic: Kate Millett
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)